To elope, most literally, merely means to run
away with intention of getting married. More specifically,
elopement is often used to refer to a marriage conducted in sudden
and secretive fashion, usually involving hurried flight away from
one's place of residence. Recently, the definition of "elope" has
been expanded in popular culture to include a marriage which takes
place in private, without advance notice, and which comes as a bit
of a surprise to the couple's family and friends. In this usage
case, there is no negative connotation to the term elopment,
rather, the term is simply used to describe a surprise and
unannounced wedding.Increasingly, no publicly announced engagement
precedes the elopement, therefore renedering the act a true
surprise to friends and family.

In England, a legal
prerequisite of marriage was the "reading of the banns" — for the three Sundays
prior to the intended date of their ceremony, the names of every
couple intending marriage had to be read aloud by the priest(s) of
their parish(es) of residence. The intention of this was to prevent
bigamy or other unlawful marriages by giving fair warning to
anybody who might have a legal right to object. In practice,
however, it also gave warning to the couples' parents, who
sometimes objected on purely personal grounds. To contravene this
law, it was necessary to get a special
license from the Archbishop
of Canterbury — or to flee somewhere the law did not apply,
across the border to Scotland, for
instance.

In the United
States marriage law can differ from state to state, which
sometimes leads couples to cross state lines to be married. Some
states, for example, require blood tests or
waiting periods before marriage; a couple wishing to wed quickly
(before, usually, their parents could object) might travel to a
state without such a rule. In the musical Guys and
Dolls, for instance, Lt. Brannigan suggests that Nathan Detroit
and Adelaide, his fiancée of fourteen years, elope to Elkton,
Maryland, which does not require a blood test. Civil rights
have also been at issue— in many states interracial
marriage was once illegal, which led to elopements. More
recently, the possibility of same-sex
marriage in Massachusetts
has once again raised the question of whether all states recognize
each other's marriages.

Today the term "elopement" is colloquially used
for any marriage performed in haste or in secret with no guests; it
is even sometimes used for well-attended and elaborately-planned
marriages which occur away from home.